These ties will however not be based on aid, the President added when French President, Emmanuel Macron, paid a day’s working visit to Ghana.

President Akufo-Addo stressed that “we want our relations with France to be characterised by an increase in trade and investment co-operation, not aid.”

The President noted that Ghana, under his leadership, has decided to turn her back on the old economy, which is dependent on the production and export of raw materials, stressing that “we want to build a value-added, industrialised economy with a modernised agriculture, which is neither victim nor pawn of the world economic order.”

Recounting the bonds of friendship that exist between the two countries, President Akufo-Addo indicated that Ghana and France have strong ties in trade, investments, civil and security co-operation, amongst others, with statistics indicating that French investments in Ghana totalled €1.5 billion in 2015, making Ghana the seventh-biggest destination of French investments in sub-Saharan Africa.

Nonetheless, the President said there was more room for improvement.

“…We can improve on this. To this end, my government has put in place measures to make Ghana the most business-friendly economy in Africa. These measures are aimed at attracting investment into Ghana, as well as stimulating growth of the private sector,” he stated.

Again, with the French language set to become one of the world’s most commonly spoken languages, by 2050, President Akufo-Addo noted that “our lives, therefore, as Ghanaians, are intimately linked with the francophone world, and this strategic association should serve as a big boost to addressing some of our mutual concerns.”

He added that “Ghana’s strategic interest requires that we actively promote regional integration of the countries of West Africa, grouped in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS).We have to play a central role in hastening the process of creating a genuine regional market out of ECOWAS, which is dominated by francophone countries.”

The President explained that the integration of West Africa will provide a ready market for the free movement of our goods and services, critical in Ghana’s quest to transforming and modernising our economy.

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By: citifmonline.com/Ghana

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Macron’s visit forms part of his tour of Africa since becoming President earlier in 2017.

Prior to that, Italian Prime Minister, Paolo Gentiloni, is also expected to be in Ghana today, Monday, November 27, for a day’s visit.

Macron’s African tour

Macron’s Africa tour which begins today, Monday, will see him visit Burkina Faso and Côte d’Ivoire, and end with Ghana.

Macron’s advisers say he hopes to modernize France’s relations with Africa with the tour by emphasizing business links, education and sport rather than development aid.

Although Macron has pledged to increase France’s aid budget to 0.55 percent of GDP by 2022, France’s aid budget was cut by 140 million euros in July, as part of 4.5 billion euros of reductions in public spending.

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By: citifmonline.com with additional files from rfi.fr

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According to the report, Macron’s personal makeup artist put in two claims for payment, one for €10,000 and another for €16,000, for doing his makeup during his travels and ahead of press conferences.

The Elysée Palace said in response: “We called in a contractor as a matter of urgency.”

Aides said that spending on makeup would be “significantly reduced” in future, Le Point reported, adding that the amount spent is less than under Macron’s predecessors.

His predecessor, François Hollande, spent €30,000 per quarter on makeup, including the salary of a makeup artist. In addition, Hollande paid his hairdresser a gross salary of €9,895 a month.

Nicolas Sarkozy spent slightly less on his makeup than Macron — €8,000 a month.

The news comes as Macron’s popularity is falling, according to opinion polls. Only 37 percent of voters approve of the job Macron is doing, down from a high of 57 percent after his election in May.

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Source: Politico.eu

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[contextly_sidebar id=”cLBeztXKEuwOFVUvnClsbt1HQtNN6YY1″]In a message to the 39-year-old former economy minister, Akufo-Addo commended the French leader for “decisive victory” in the presidential election run-off, held over the weekend.

“I applaud the determination of M. Macron in his acceptance speech, to “fight the divisions that undermine France”, and effect the change the French people voted for,” Akufo-Addo said.

“I also congratulate outgoing French President, M. François Hollande, for his dedicated service to the French people. His efforts in helping to deepen the relations between France and Ghana, and the rest of Africa, are deeply appreciated and will not be forgotten.”

Macon, a pro-EU centrist won the French presidency over the far-right Marine Le Pen.

Macron ran as a “neither left nor right” independent promised to shake up the French political system.

He polled 65.1% of the total votes cast against Le Pen’s 34.9%.

Macron, who has never held elected office and was unknown until three years ago, is France’s youngest president.

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By: Jonas Nyabor/citifmonline.com/Ghana

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The centrist candidate has won more than 60% of the vote, according to numerous estimates, comfortably beating far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, who swiftly conceded defeat.

Addressing supporters in the east of Paris, she said she had already called Mr Macron to congratulate him, adding the French people had voted for “continuity”.

Mr Macron’s supporters, meanwhile, are pouring into the courtyard outside the Louvre museum in the French capital, where the 39-year-old will deliver a victory speech later.

Speaking to the French news agency AFP, Mr Macron said a new “hopeful and confident” chapter for the nation had begun.

His triumph marks a stunning rise for the banker turned politician, who only set up his En Marche! (On the move) party last year and becomes the country’s youngest ever leader.

The election has seen a shift in French politics, with the traditional centre-right and centre-left parties falling at the first round, leaving Mr Macron and Ms Le Pen to fight to the finish.

The presidential contest usually attracts a high turnout, but the projections say there will be a record number of blank and spoiled ballots.

Figures from the country’s Interior Ministry said 65.30% of voters had cast ballots by 5pm local time, a drop on the level seen at the same stage in 2012 and 2007.

A poll on Friday predicted a final turnout of 75%, down from over 80% in 2002, 2007 and 2012.

Many who plan to vote said they were choosing between the “lesser of two evils” because they didn’t find either remaining candidate acceptable after their party was ejected from the race.

The final day before voting was overshadowed by revelations that Mr Macron’s party had suffered a “massive and coordinated” hacking attack.

Mr Macron’s victory has been been welcomed in European capitals in the wake of a populist tide that has seen Britain vote for Brexit and the US elect Donald Trump.

He wants deeper EU integration, while Ms Le Pen’s policies included France leaving the bloc, quitting the euro and cracking down on immigration.

Mr Macron’s victory marks the third time in six months – following elections in Austria and the Netherlands – that European voters rejected far-right populists.

He is unlikely to have much of a honeymoon period however, given close to 60% of those who planned to vote for him said they would do so to stop Mrs Le Pen, rather than out of any enthusiasm for Mr Macron.

–

Source: Sky News

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Macron, 39, a former economy minister who ran as a “neither left nor right” independent promising to shake up the French political system, took 65.1% to Le Pen’s 34.9%, according to initial projections from early counts.

But Le Pen’s score nonetheless marked a historic high for the French far right. Despite a lacklustre campaign that ended with a calamitous performance in the final TV debate, she was projected to have taken more than 10 million votes, roughly double that of her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, when he reached the presidential run-off in 2002. The anti-immigration, anti-EU Front National’s supporters asserted that the party has a central place as an opposition force in France.

Macron, who has never held elected office and was unknown until three years ago, is France’s youngest president. He will take over a country under a state of emergency, still facing a major terrorism threat and struggling with a stagnant economy after decades of mass unemployment. France is also divided after an election campaign in which anti-establishment anger saw the traditional left and right ruling parties ejected from the race in the first round for the first time since the period after the second world war.

Turnout was projected to have been the lowest in more than 40 years. Macron’s victory came not only because voters supported his policy platform for free market, pro-business reform, and his promises to energise the EU coupled with a leftwing approach to social issues. Some of his voters came from other parties across the political spectrum and turned out not in complete support of his programme, but to stop the Front National.

In a political landscape with a strong hard left and far right, Macron faces the challenge of trying to win a parliamentary majority for his fledgling political movement En Marche! (On the Move) in legislative elections next month. Without a majority, he will not be able to carry out his manifesto promises.

After the Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump as US president, the race for the Élysée was the latest election to shake up establishment politics by kicking out the figures that stood for the status quo, ejecting the mainstream parties that have dominated French politics for 50 years and leaving the political novice Macron to do battle with the far right.

His victory comes after a bitter campaign with Le Pen in which she accused him of being part of an elite that did not understand ordinary people, and he said Le Pen represented the “party of hatred” that wanted a “civil war” in France. The run-off pitted France’s most Europhile candidate against its most Europhobe.

Hours before the end of campainging on Friday night, Macron’s campaign was hacked, which Paris prosecutors are investigating. Hundreds of thousands of emails and documents were dumped online and spread by WikiLeaks in what his campaign called an attempt at “democratic destabilisation”.

Macron, a former investment banker and senior civil servant who grew up in a bourgeois family in Amiens, served as deputy chief of staff to the Socialist president, François Hollande, but was not part of the Socialist party.

In 2014, Hollande appointed him economy minister, but he left government in 2016, complaining that pro-business reforms were not going far enough. A year ago, he formed En Marche!, promising to shake up France’s “vacuous” and discredited political class.

Macron campaigned on pledges to ease labour laws, improve education in deprived areas and extend protections for self-employed people.

The election race was full of extraordinary twists and turns. Hollande became the first president since the war to decide not to run again for office after slumping to record unpopularity with a satisfaction rating of 4%.
His troubled five-year term left France still struggling with a sluggish economy and a mood of disillusionment with the political class. The country is more divided than ever before. More than 230 people have been killed in terrorist attacks in little more than two years, the political class is questioning Islam’s place in French society, and more than 3 million people are unemployed.

The rightwing candidate François Fillon, one seen as a favourite, was badly damaged by a judicial investigation into a string of corruption allegations, including that he had paid his wife and children generous salaries from public funds for fake parliamentary assistant jobs.

The ruling Socialist party, under its candidate Benoît Hamon, saw its score plunge to 6%, while the hard-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon finished third.

The final round marks a redrawing of the political landscape, away from the old left-right divide towards a contest between a liberal, pro-globalisation stance, and “close the borders” nationalism. Le Pen has styled the election as being between her party’s “patriots” and the “globalists” she says Macron represents.

–

Source: The Guardian

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Phishing emails, malware and fake net domains were all being used as attack techniques, said Feike Hacquebord, from security company Trend Micro.

The attackers are believed to be part of the same group that targeted the US election.

Russia has denied that it is behind attacks aimed at Mr Macron.

Digital fingerprint

In a report, Mr Hacquebord said the group behind the “aggressive” attacks was a collective of Russian hackers known widely as Fancy Bear, APT28 and Pawn Storm.

He said the group was using an extensive arsenal of high-tech con tricks to grab the login names, passwords and other credentials of staff aiding Mr Macron’s bid to be the next French president.

Mr Macron got through the first round of the presidential election as did Marine Le Pen.

In particular, said Mr Hacquebord, the hacker group had registered several net domains similar to those already registered by the French politician’s staff.

The fake domains were then used in phishing emails sent to key workers in an attempt to get them to visit the websites so login details could be scooped up.

The hackers were also abusing a system called OAuth that let people log into one service using the credentials they use for another.

Mr Hacquebord said telltale techniques of the group lent weight to the idea that the people involved in the French attacks were behind ones seen last year in the US.

“We have seen that phishing sites were set up, and the fingerprints were really the same actors as in the Democratic National Congress breach,” he told the Reuters news agency.

A spokesman for the French national cyber-security agency, ANSSI, confirmed that it too had seen several attacks on Mr Macron’s staff and back-office systems.

However, a spokesman for the agency said it was difficult to be sure that the Pawn Storm group was behind the attacks.

A spokesman for the Macron campaign said it knew about the range of attacks aimed at it and none had led to the release of sensitive data.

“These are usual cyber-attack tactics,” Mounir Mahjoubi told CNN.

“We have set up a security team and every member of the staff is trained to report these attempts.”

A security researcher called The Grugq, who is known as an expert on operational security, said Mr Macron’s campaign was an easier target than some because of its reliance on the Telegram app for messaging.

“Its security is not particularly strong compared with alternatives, and the defaults guide users towards insecure practices,” he wrote.

The Pawn Storm group is also believed to have been involved in other attacks on political organisations, including the Christian Democratic Union of Germany, the Turkish government and Montenegro’s parliament, as well as the World Anti-Doping Agency and Arabic television channel al-Jazeera.

–

Source: BBC

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Mr Macron, a former banker, is seen as a political outsider, having never run an election campaign before.

After topping Sunday’s vote, he is now favourite to win the run-off on 7 May.

It is the first time in six decades that neither of France’s main left-wing or right-wing parties has had a candidate in the second round.

How tight is the race?

Mr Macron won 23.8% of votes in the first round, while Ms Le Pen took 21.5%.

Their nearest challengers, centre-right François Fillon and hard-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon, fell behind, with just over 19% each.

But several political rivals are now expected to unite behind Mr Macron in the run-off vote, in a bid to keep Ms Le Pen’s Front National (FN) from power.

What does Mr Macron stand for?

At 39, Mr Macron could become the youngest president France has ever had – and would be the first president in the Fifth Republic without the backing of an established party.

Mr Macron was current President Francois Hollande’s economy minister but quit to create his own party, En Marche, which pushes a liberal, pro-EU agenda.

His campaign promises include:

• A €50bn (£43bn; $53bn) public investment plan to cover job-training, exit from coal and shift to renewable energy, infrastructure and modernisation
• Big cut in corporation tax and more leeway for companies to renegotiate 35-hour week

• Cut in jobless rate to 7% (now 9.7%)

• Ban on mobile phone use in schools for under-15s and a €500 culture pass for 18 year olds

In a victory speech to supporters, Mr Macron borrowed language favoured by his rival to describe himself as the patriotic choice for France.

“I hope that in a fortnight I will become your president. I want to become the president of all the people of France – the president of the patriots in the face of the threat from the nationalists,” he said.

What about Ms Le Pen?

Ms Le Pen took over the FN leadership from her father in January 2011 and helped her party secure big gains in regional elections.

Her party wants to slash immigration, clamp down on free trade, and overturn France’s relationship with Europe.

Her campaign has called for:

• Negotiation with Brussels on a new EU, followed by a referendum

• “Automatic” expulsion of illegal immigrants and legal immigration cut to 10,000 per year following an immediate total moratorium

• “Extremist” mosques closed and priority to French nationals in social housing

• Retirement age fixed at 60 and 35-hour week assured

Following the first round results, Ms Le Pen made an “appeal to all patriots”, saying a vote for her was the key to the “survival of France”.

Le Pen supporters celebrating her win

“Wherever they come from, whatever their origin, whatever they voted for in the first round, I invite them all to join us and to abandon ancient quarrels and to concentrate on what is essential for our country,” she said.

Who is likely to win?

Correspondents say the next head of state is almost certain to be Mr Macron, as most other parties are now backing him.

Benoit Hamon, the candidate of President Hollande’s Socialist Party who failed to make an impact in the first round, urged those who voted for him to support Mr Macron in the next stage.

Mr Fillon has done the same.

But Mr Macron may struggle to secure a majority in the national assembly, as he does not have the backing of an established political party.

This means he would have to negotiate to have his policies approved through parliament – which could be challenging.

What do the results mean for the EU?

Many European leaders have been congratulating Mr Macron on the first round results – as they are keen to strengthen the union after Brexit.

Mr Macron addressed the nation in front of an EU flag as the results came in – something noticed by both pro and anti-EU politicians.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman, Steffan Seibert, tweeted: “It’s good that Emmanuel Macron was successful with his course for a strong EU and social market economy. All the best for the next two weeks.”

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker also congratulated him, as did EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini.

“The result is the hope and future of our generation,” she tweeted.

Anti-EU politicians, on the other hand, have congratulated Ms Le Pen for making the second round.

Dutch MP Geert Wilders, who leads the anti-immigration Freedom Party, said the results were a “bright day for patriots in France and elsewhere who want more national sovereignty and less EU and immigration”.

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Source: BBC

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